Low-power Radio Design: Mixers Fundamentals

This lecture covers the fundamentals of mixers in low-power radio design for the IoT. It explains the main types of mixers, such as passive and active mixers, and discusses their characteristics including conversion gains, linearity, and noise figures. The lecture also delves into non-linearity based mixers, focusing on the single balanced mixer (SBM) and multiplier-based mixers. Detailed analyses of the SBM are provided, covering LO feedthrough, conversion gains, LO gains, noise sources, and thermal noise. The lecture concludes with a summary highlighting the importance of the mode of operation for mixing transistors in achieving optimal performance.